The invention relates to a spreading connector for connecting two furniture parts, comprising a built-in pot which can be pressed, pot bottom first, into a housing bore of one furniture part and the hollow-cylindrical pot wall of which has a wall opening and at least one spreading tab which is cut free in the hollow-cylindrical pot wall and is pivotable about an axis running tangentially to the hollow-cylindrical pot wall, as well as a tightening element, rotatably mounted inside the built-in pot, for tightening a fastening bolt of the other furniture part which passes through the wall opening, the tightening element having an outer eccentric surface for spreading the at least one spreading tab.
Such spreading connectors are sufficiently well known for wooden panels or chipboard, for example. For a good function, a firm seat of the spreading connector in the housing bore of the furniture part is to be achieved. This is normally achieved by making the diameter of the built-in pot about 0.5 mm larger than the diameter of the bore, that is to say the spreading connector must be hammered in for this tight fit.
There are also spreading connectors which can simply be pushed into the bore. In such spreading connectors, the rotary movement of the tightening element for tightening the fastening bolt is then also used to spread spreading tabs which are cut free in the hollow-cylindrical pot wall and spread about an axis running tangentially to the hollow-cylindrical pot wall. Because the spreading tabs extend with their free tab end in the direction towards the pot bottom of the built-in pot, spreading takes place not in the wall region of the housing bore close to the surface but in the middle region away from the surface. In the case of chipboard, where the middle region has a significantly lower density and lower strength than the edge regions close to the surface, which edge regions are additionally compressed over the outer 2-3 mm, the maximum spread accordingly lies in the uncompressed middle layer, so that the spreading action here is not optimal.